Transactional Grammar School

Once upon a time true child of Hermes second grader edge of hardtop Catholic school playground where the Church operates makeshift ice cream parlor with uniformed sixth grader in white button-down shirt working wobbly card table spread with melting ice cream sandwiches slabs of cloying coldness lodged between stale black wafers each costing a silver dime long line of school children each with ten cents in hand except true child he has no money for ice cream or anything else but does have imagination and has figured out a way to swindle the system instead of placing dime into ice cream boy’s clerky sixth grade mitt pretends to drop one in his button-down white shirt pocket that serves as till while saying into the eyes “There you go, nice tie, gimme my ice cream” is sufficient disrupture to the etiquette of exchange and true child gets away with it free ice cream not just that day but every day for a week till Sister Mary Dorothy cops on to the pagan con job with her steely eyes from perch in pan-heavenly-optican and the jig is up hauls true boy off by the ear to her office sentences him to a “punishment task” of writing “Thou shalt not steal” properly punctuated one thousand times on lined yellow paper that’ll teach him a lesson she thinks but another one already learned will stick more profitably about how money and words really nothing work by just everybody being agreeable and magic.